Skip to main content
Main

Tomato Sandwich

A sandwich made with white bread, butter, lettuce, mayonnaise or cream, and sliced ripe tomatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lettuce and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,655 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tomato Sandwich

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Spread butter on thin slices of white bread.

  2. Place a crisp piece of lettuce on the buttered bread.

  3. Add mayonnaise dressing or rich cream on top of the lettuce.

  4. Layer thin slices of pared ripe tomatoes over the dressing.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Lettuce + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Bread + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Bread + lettucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

White bread
Provides the soft, neutral base that holds the filling together.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and keeps the bread from soaking up moisture from the filling.
Crisp lettuce
Adds a cool, crunchy layer that contrasts with the soft bread and tomato.
Mayonnaise dressing or rich cream
Adds fat and moisture, binding the lettuce and tomato and seasoning the sandwich.
Ripe tomatoes
Supplies juicy moisture, acidity and sweetness as the main flavour.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, cream, tomato):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Onionfits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, cream, tomato. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes